“It’s a very important public debate we need to have,” he said. “We are in a society where technology has grown so fast and the government has all of the resources and regular people have little resources.”

The company has provided the FBI with requested data. However, it balked when the agency asked the company to build a new version of the iPhone operating system that would make certain security features inoperable.

“In the wrong hands, this software – which does not exist today – would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym had ordered Apple to help the FBI break into an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 attack that killed 14 people. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, died in a gun battle with police.

The ruling by Pym, a former federal prosecutor, requires Apple to supply software the FBI can load onto Farook's county-owned work iPhone to bypass a self-destruct feature that erases the phone's data after too many unsuccessful attempts to unlock it. The FBI wants to be able to try different combinations in rapid sequence until it finds the right one.

Delisle said it’s a matter of bringing a tech that can be exploited by “the bad guys” into existence.

“Any time you produce a new technology, it can get deconstructed and reverse-engineered,” Delisle said. “They are compromising every other law-abiding system” by creating the tech.

“I’m glad industry titans like him are willing to take a stand,” he said.